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Many posts within SlickDeals have multiple threads about fraudulent credit card account transactions occurring within a few weeks of placing an order at Rakuten Buy.com. If you have been affected, please post your experience here so the magnitude of Rakuten Buy.com's apparent security breach and the impact on the affected Rakuten customers may be known. (Please save other issues, either regarding Rakuten, or other issues with credit card misuse to other posts.)

If you are one of the affected Rakuten customers, please make a post with (1) first date of the fraud transaction and (2) the most recent Rakuten.com order date (if there was one).
The most important thing however is to just be counted, if you're one of the affected customers.

(2) Many other users have been affected outside of the SlickDeals community
[Ref: Specialized Site Now Available: http://rakutenfraud.com/]

(3) The apparent security breach is not limited to just customers who placed orders. Several have reported credit card details were taken from their Rakuten My Account screen.
[Ref: 'Cletus81' Post #435, 'missmex1' Post #445]

(6) Almost 100% of all fraud reports are from customers who gave Rakuten their credit (or debit) card directly (rather than using payment gateways or other payment methods (gift cards, etc.)
[Ref: Thread postings.]

(7) Many customers were able to uniquely identify Rakuten as the source of the credit card theft.
[Ref: Many thread postings from customers using a one-time Virtual Credit Card Number, a new credit card only used at Rakuten, or a new Gift Card.]

(9) Using a Virtual Credit Card Number or Gift Cards at Rakuten may not be the best alternative.
[Ref: 'GPz1100' Post #205, Post #447, etc. Several affected customers posted their VCCN's later breach caused the credit card company to reissue a new card.]
[Ref: 'namlook' Post #449, etc. Hacker's later emptied the gift card or sold the balance on eBay.]
[Ref: 'bargainfinder09' Post #449 Must close VCCN out afterwards.]

(10) The apparent security breach still exists at Rakuten today, and a Rakuten customer order is not required to generate the subsequent CC fraud.
[Ref: 'Edxzxz' Post #583]

BOGOTA – "Local police are asking anyone who has used the website Rakuten.com, formerly Buy.com, to look out for suspicious charges on their credit cards." The police department started investigating three cases in which residents complained of fraudulent charges on their credit cards and has since discovered five additional victims, including one in New York City, Bogota Detective Sgt. Jonathan Misskerg said Tuesday. The single thread between the victims is that they have made purchases on Rakuten.com in the past three months, police said. The victims' names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and credit card information were used to open accounts at online equipment suppliers, police said.

The purchases, made at five online stores, included gas valves and warehouse time clocks and totaled around $10,000, Misskerg said. The buyer was traced to an address in Bogotá, Colombia, Misskerg said. After the items were purchased, they were sent to an Englewood company, which then shipped the items to Colombia, Misskerg said. Police declined to identify the Englewood company, saying that the owner was cooperating with authorities and that it remained unclear whether he was part of the scheme. But since investigators first spoke with the company's owner, someone electronically deposited funds in the company owner's account — enough to cover the cost of shipping the items to Colombia, Misskerg said. "We've seized the packages and additional merchandise," Misskerg said Tuesday. "We are going to try to shut him down at this point."

Rakuten.com, a Japan-based online retail company completed its purchase of Buy.com, a California-based online market place, in July 2010. The website was rebranded as Rakuten.com this year. A company representative said Tuesday that the company had not been contacted by the local police, but that it would cooperate with authorities. "If there is a police investigation, we are not aware of it, and we have not been contacted," said Mark Kirschner, the company's executive officer for global marketing, adding that the company takes such reports "very seriously."

However, an online message board [SlickDeals.net] contains several comments from posters claiming to have used the website and complaining about fraudulent charges on their credit cards. Kirschner said the company was aware of the website and had made overtures, "without success," to those claiming to be affected. He urged those affected to contact the company's head of customer experience at 877-880-1030 ext. 2095. Kirschner said he was unaware of any security breach or hacking incident that could have compromised customers' information.

Starting about a month ago, rumblings began on the SlickDeals forums among people who had recently made purchases from Rakuten Shopping, the new brand name of the marketplace Buy.com. The purchases made were diverse, ranging from time clocks in Colombia to newspaper subscriptions in Cleveland to plane tickets in Germany. Something is very, very wrong here: hundreds of victims from recent months have come forward on Slickdeals alone.
'
Rakuten Shopping is a sort of online mall: the site allows other vendors to set up their own "marketplace" stores and sell items. Users have reported fraudulent credit card transactions after purchases from a variety of marketplace vendors.

Rakuten staff reach out to complainers on Facebook and even on the deal forums, asking victims to call in order to straighten things out. If they have a solution in progress, Rakuten has not let customers know, including victims. While talking too much about it publicly might compromise the investigations, victims are unhappy that the only thing they've heard from the company is "call us!" to people whose cards have been breached. Apart from the threads on the subject on shopping sites, victims have started their own site, the appropriately-titled RakutenFraud.com.

Community Wiki

When you are viewing Your Shopping Cart, be sure to click on "Proceed to Checkout" first, and THEN select PayPal or Google Wallet.

You CAN earn and use Super Points with Google Wallet.

You cannot use Super Points with PayPal.

Do NOT use Visa Checkout/V.me or Masterpass:

Visa Checkout: "While the Visa Checkout Account Service helps facilitate the transaction, the purchase or return of goods or services from a merchant in connection with your use of the Visa Checkout Account Service is solely between you and the merchant, and Visa is not a party to the transaction", see https://secure.checkout.visa.com/pages/terms

Masterpass passes over your payment information and does not process your payment. For evidence, visit https://masterpass.com/Wallet/Help, under Checkout, "What if the merchant doesn't accept the card I want to use at checkout?"

Can one use Super Points with V.me? Yes, but don't use V.me anymore (see above).

There have been multiple posts by rrmoore stating: "Many are reporting they did with PayPal and V.me; But you can't use existing points toward the deal." I read that to mean points cannot be used with V.me, which is incorrect. I am sure rrmoore made those posts to help people. I am also sure rrmoore has a strong sense of right and wrong because he so wants to get to the bottom of the problem. Accordingly, I hope he will go back to clarify his posts because Rakuten Super Points CAN be used with V.me.

Section (1): Ways to help Rakuten take ownership of the security breach:

Letter to the Editor at Fraud Magazine:http://www.fraud-magazine.com/let...ditor.aspx
ACFE is the world's largest anti-fraud organization and premier provider of anti-fraud training and education. Together with more than 65,000 members, the ACFE is reducing business fraud worldwide and inspiring public confidence in the integrity and objectivity within the profession.

Send a message to the Amex Public Relations Dept: Desiree Fish, Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications / desiree.c.fish@aexp.com
Send a message to the Discover Public Relations Dept: Jon Drummond, Public Relations, jondrummond@discover.com

Also, please consider adding an additional posting to http://rakutenfraud.com/ (after you've posted here, of course). With the dedicated site, you can use a different posting username if you wish and no registration is required.
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Section (2): Ways to help police catch the identity thieves:

Get the address where your product from the fraudulent charge was shipped from your CC company and post the city to see if we have any matches: -- 'namlook'
1. North Brunswick New Jersey(I have a name and the full address but I won't post that here)

Call the defrauded merchant (might need police involvement with some) to obtain the IP Address of the Fraudulent Order -- 'Ids322' & 'Diamonique'

Those affected should contact Rakuten's head of customer experience at 877-880-1030 ext. 2095. -- 'epicd2012'
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Fraud Alerts on Credit Reports: For those who are a bit concerned/paranoid about ID theft, here is the FTC website on it. http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/featu...tity-theft
The first step they show is placing a temporary (90 days), free, fraud alert with 1 of 3 credit card companies: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/artic...raud-alert
It that tells the creditor requesting your report to do additional due diligence. I think it's a free service but it automatically expires after 90 days. The creditor however is not required to do any additional verification, but they don't want to get lose money either.

I'm way late to the party but I can report a definite rakuten fraud charge from around May 2013. I don't even want to log in to my account there to get the exact date info. But anyway, I had purchased a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse FP deal from rakuten and approximately 1-2 weeks later I got a call from Chase Bank.

Apparently someone called in to Chase saying they were me with "all my private information" and tried to get them to change over the phone number associated with my account, so they could basically have complete control of my Chase account. Chase said no, and called me to make sure that it indeed was not me who had just called in. I said of course not. And then they proceeded to tell me there was a $900+ charge on my account for somewhere stupid I would never shop like Forever 21. So I went through the usual deal of getting the card # closed out, a new one sent, the charge removed etc. It was little scary just because someone actually called in and had all that info, but the clean up was relatively painless and I haven't had any problems since.

At the time of course, I didn't think anything about my random small rakuten purchase (the only thing I've bought from there since they used to be buy.com). But a month or two later in another SD thread someone referenced Rakuten and people's CC numbers being stolen, and I was like "aha" that's what it was!

Didn't realize this thread was out here, so like I said I'm way late to the party, but thought I'd share.

During the last Vault giveaway of the 15 dollar free stuff, i used a card I never use for anything else because I was skeptical, since all of the Rakuten issues. Well about a week ago, it was fraudulently charged 1009.11 at a 7-11 (they must have been trying to buy the entire snack aisle). Chase fraud caught it and sent a new card. This card was never used on anything else in over a year and a half, and it never leaves the house.

I'm way late to the party but I can report a definite rakuten fraud charge from around May 2013. I don't even want to log in to my account there to get the exact date info. But anyway, I had purchased a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse FP deal from rakuten and approximately 1-2 weeks later I got a call from Chase Bank.

Apparently someone called in to Chase saying they were me with "all my private information" and tried to get them to change over the phone number associated with my account, so they could basically have complete control of my Chase account. Chase said no, and called me to make sure that it indeed was not me who had just called in. I said of course not. And then they proceeded to tell me there was a $900+ charge on my account for somewhere stupid I would never shop like Forever 21. So I went through the usual deal of getting the card # closed out, a new one sent, the charge removed etc. It was little scary just because someone actually called in and had all that info, but the clean up was relatively painless and I haven't had any problems since.

At the time of course, I didn't think anything about my random small rakuten purchase (the only thing I've bought from there since they used to be buy.com). But a month or two later in another SD thread someone referenced Rakuten and people's CC numbers being stolen, and I was like "aha" that's what it was!

Didn't realize this thread was out here, so like I said I'm way late to the party, but thought I'd share.

Wow, I didn't exactly read this entire thread but.. are we in any danger if we used masterpass with rakuten? Just bought something last night using masterpass.

I bought an item with the masterpass discount but just to be on the safe side I used BOA virtual number which I can set the spending limit. This way it doesn't matter if they have the card info, they can't charge anymore than the limit i set. You can't be too careful now and days.

After reading this I'm a little bit scared now cause I just bought something that's kind of expensive on the 30th on nov I used a credit card so I'm hoping I won't get fraud

By the way since I'm really new to this site this is my first purchased from this site..
Can somebody tell me more about the seller rating is it important like amazon ? Because before I buy something from a seller I always tend to see the rating first.
Last thing is,when it comes to frauding credit card,is it rakuten.com that frauds it,or is it the seller?
Can somebody please help me out!!

Placed an order Nov 30 using MasterPass. I signed up for MasterPass just to use on Rakuten as did not want to risk entering my CC information. I have not used my MasterPass on anything else other than Rakuten. Today Dec 3rd I got an email saying my MasterPass password has been changed. I quickly called MasterPass and told them to delete my whole account. I used a very strong string full of characters, numbers and letters for password. So for sure that means it is an inside job whoever that got my information from Rakuten.